Welcome to week one's meditation.
In today's practice,
We'll be focusing on mindfulness of breath.
So I invite you all to find a comfortable seat where you can sit with a sense of ease and relaxation in the body,
But also a sense of uprightness in the spine,
Bringing some wakefulness to the posture.
You may roll your shoulders up and down your back body,
Opening up the chest,
And then softening the skin on the face,
The jaw,
Loosening the belly,
Letting any tension that's residing there melt away,
Taking a deep breath in through your nose,
Filling the lungs,
Filling the belly,
And a long breath out.
And another deep breath in through the nose,
Filling the lungs,
And filling the belly even more,
And a long breath out.
Then letting your breath return to its natural rhythm,
Letting it breathe in and breathe out at whatever pace it likes.
No need to control or force it to be any other way than how it is.
As a support for your concentration,
You may explore where you feel the breath most clearly in your body.
That may be in the coolness of the air entering the nostrils and the warmth of the air exiting,
Or the rise in the chest and its subtle falling,
Or lower in the belly as it expands and contracts with each breath in and out.
Or maybe you get a sense of the whole body breathing,
The whole body subtly inflating and deflating as the breath travels in and out.
Wherever you feel the breath most clearly,
Let your attention rest there for the remainder of the sit.
Let that be your anchor.
Seeing if you can experience each breath as a fresh and novel sensation,
As if each breath is the first breath you've ever taken.
It is normal that as we sit here,
Other thoughts,
Emotions,
Sounds,
Images will arise in our awareness.
We don't need to get rid of them or push them away.
Rather,
We're keeping our preference on the sensations of the breath and letting all the rest of it remain in the background.
If you find your mind is distracted,
That is completely normal.
You don't need to make this another reason to judge yourself.
Instead,
Every time you notice you've been thinking,
You have an opportunity to let that thought go and then slowly reopen to the sensations of the present moment.
Noticing your body sitting here,
Or the sounds in the room,
And then reattuning to the sensations of the breath moving in and out of your body,
Reestablishing your attention there.
As you breathe in,
Know that you're breathing in,
And as you breathe out,
Know that you're breathing out,
Taking notice of the pause in between breaths and starting again with each breath,
Using each breath as a chance to become present once more.
For the last few moments of our sit together,
Just collecting the attention and letting it rest with the breath once more,
No matter how far away you've drifted in your thoughts and in your mind,
Using this as a chance to start again,
Start afresh.
That's part of the beauty of mindfulness,
Is each moment is a chance to become present to whatever is here.
I invite you guys to slowly open your eyes,
Get reacquainted with the room.
You may gently move the body,
Wiggling the toes,
Rolling the shoulders,
And pay mind to how you transition out of this meditation,
How you take the quality of awareness and the thread of mindfulness that we've built together and bringing that to the rest of your day.
I thank you for sitting with me and letting me take you on this journey.
Have a wonderful day.
